Summer Ball was one of my favorite books as a young teen and I wanted to use my vector design to put together a teen-friendly book cover. I combined warm colors and a summer camp atmosphere in order to create a cover that would align with the title: Summer Ball. The book is about an undersized basketball player (Danny Walker) who attends a basketball camp with the country’s top players. Throughout the camp Danny is faced with high levels of competition and a variety of conflicts. I used the basketball to represent the sun and included vector trees and mountains in the background to bring out the summer camp atmosphere. Furthermore, the large basketball hovering over the horizon is representative of Danny learning to overcome hardship. 

The Things They Carried is one of my all-time favorite books. This book is packed full of short stories that chronicle the events encountered by soldiers in the Vietnam War. These characters are used to describe some of what Tim O’Brien encountered when he was in the war. This book gives a glimpse into the hardships of being a soldier. I tried to exemplify this through the cover of the book by giving the viewer a “sneak-peak” through the silhouette of the soldier’s head which acts as a lens through which we view the Vietnam War.